Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
for increasing sustainable practices. If the gap is too small, too many ventures will
be compliant, and most products will be compliant, but there will be little appeal
to the consumers because of limited product differentiation, and the programme
may fail because there is a diminished differential in the marketplace for compliant
products and no incentive for producers to keep improving practices once they
achieve compliance.
The ongoing success of an incentive programme relies on a continuing level
of differentiation amongst products in the marketplace. This means that, after an
incentive programme reaches maturity, there should be a significant proportion
of seafood product that is not endorsed or compliant. After reaching a minimum
threshold for effectiveness, an incentive programme may begin to lose effective-
ness because of a lack of product differentiation and the development of competitive
products and alternative certification systems (Gulbrandsen 2006). This means that
the gap defined by the standard must continue to be maintained through the con-
tinuous improvement of the standard, and the consequent maintenance of product
differentiation in the marketplace. So, while the standard should be set to ensure that
there is a reasonable prospect for compliance of a significant proportion of the po-
tential fisheries or aquaculture ventures, it must be able to be continuously reviewed
and improved. This is not a flexible standard, but one which can be systematically
adapted and upgraded by the standard owner.
A further important consequence of creating a standard that is too high, leading
to a failure in the supply side for endorsed product, is that this will frustrate the mar-
ketplace, and lead to many inefficiencies and unintended consequences. Increasing
consumer demand for endorsed product that is only available in highly limited
supply may create issues such as increased levels of illegal fishing, label fraud,
demand for similar but non-endorsed substitute species that might be considered
to be produced in an environmentally undesirable way and a 'halo' effect for other
species and management systems that may be unwarranted.
10.4.8
Fixed versus flexible standard?
Where standards are expressed in a general way, and are more correctly considered
to be guidelines for certifiers/verifiers (such as the MSC Principles and Criteria)
rather than a definitive standard, the standard is left flexible and open to inter-
pretation. This is risky, because different certifiers may interpret the standard in
different ways, leading to inconsistent verification outcomes. For example, a fish-
ery assessed under a flexible standard may be considered to be sustainable and
well managed even though it kills hundreds of protected seals as bycatch, and this
may be inconsistent with consumer expectations about seafood sustainability (see
Chapter 18).
Standards that are fixed risk being too narrow in scope, for example, an inflexible
standard may dictate focus on a specific narrow set of issues, and ventures seeking
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